Fiction – Dead Kids Walking

This is the first part of a WIP for my second entry in the Wattpad Horror Smack Down. –

Tyrell couldn’t wait until Halloween. It was the one night a year that he and his friends could walk among the living without fear of being caught. As ghosts they still looked much like they had at the point of their deaths and in his case that was pretty ugly. His dad had gone nuts and stabbed him about thirty times with a butcher knife. As if that weren’t enough, the old man had taken hunks out of his corpse and ground it into sausage for his breakfast the next day. That had happened thirty years ago and he still hadn’t really gotten over it, not that anyone could blame him really.

His first stop was to pick up Aileen. The girl had developed an allergic reaction to something in her scarecrow costume and had suffocated to death. “Hey Ty!” Her voice was a little muffled. They tried to take off the mask once, but there was no seem. She was stuck in her costume for eternity, or until they could find a way to move on.

“Hey Aileen” Tyrell waved back. “You ready?”

Aileen laughed. “Yup. Not like I have to worry about my makeup anymore.” She arose from the sea of Jack o’Lanterns. The people that bought her parents’ house after they moved were nuts for Halloween. When they had all of the gang together this would be the last and best stop.

The walked to pick of Joey next. Tyrell marveled not for the first time that his shoes made noise. In addition to being visible and blending in, they could interact with the living and be looked on as one of them. He did a little dance, enjoying the scuffling sound.

“Eww, stop. Your dangling bits are making weird noises.”

Tyrell could imagine the frown. His shredded flesh and exposed organs were indeed making a bit of a sloshing noise. He supposed that would be off putting. A gaggle of other kids passed them going in the other direction.

“Awesome costume, dude!” A boy wearing a Clone Trooper suit from the dollar store gave him two thumbs up.

Tyrell waved at him and smiled. The grin faltered when he remembered how he’d earned his “costume”. With determination he plastered it back in place. He wouldn’t let his old man rob him of this night.

A little further up the road, a chubby kid dressed like a hobo waited for them. “Hey guys.” He had his hankie on a stick over one shoulder. His face was smudged with dirt.

“Howdy Joey!” Tyrell almost didn’t want to pick their friend up. Joey was always a bit of a downer. He actually had been a homeless kid in life and was killed by a fellow transient. Now he was forever stuck in what had become the paragon of the lamest costume ever.

“Only one more in our troop.” Aileen looked around. “she was supposed to be here with you.

Joey pointed up the street. “Becky went that way. She said she just couldn’t wait.”

Tyrell growled. She wasn’t the most patient of spooks. He looked for her white dress and saw it sparkling in the distance. “Come on!” He broke into a run, not knowing if they’d follow. He got to her just a few seconds ahead of his friends.

Becky was an angel, not literally, but after getting lost in a blizzard on her way to a church pageant, she had frozen to death. Her wings and halo were top notch but had been fake and still were. Her cherubic face, that of a ten year old, turned and greeted Tyrel l with a frown. “Took you guys long enough.”